


to see ourselves as others see us

by LetsSpinTheWheel



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Fluff, Mentions of religion, Multi, New Year's Eve, resolutions, sweet earnest boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:57:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetsSpinTheWheel/pseuds/LetsSpinTheWheel
Summary: Two years ago, Lovett had tweeted, "I'm in 2018 and it's pretty good so far. Happy New Year."He was on the same couch, with the same video game on the TV, but now there were three champagne glasses instead of two.
Relationships: Ronan Farrow/Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30
Collections: Crooked Secret Santa 2019





	to see ourselves as others see us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sansets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansets/gifts).

Two years ago, Lovett had tweeted, "I'm in 2018 and it's pretty good so far. Happy New Year." 

He was on the same couch, with the same video game on the TV, but now there were three champagne glasses instead of two.

He sank a little more deeply into the couch and rolled his head towards Tommy's shoulder, resting gently on his arm, and got his legs a little more tangled up with Ronan's.

The ball wasn't going to drop for another 20 minutes or so. Lovett was wired from having consumed half a diet Coke after 5pm but his over-worked boys were fighting a losing battle with sleep. Ronan had dropped the controller at least twice, and Tommy kept nodding off, then jerking his head upright.

The fifth time Tommy's head lolled towards his, Lovett pushed himself upright and tried to rally the troops:

"Alright," he said firmly. "We need to get the blood flowing here. C'mon, we're young, virile men! It's not even midnight! Okay, New Year's Resolutions, let's go."

Tommy and Ronan both looked at him with the exact same quizzical facial expression which was very annoying, except for the way it made his heart feel like it was going to burst.

He continued, undeterred: "I mean it, what are your resolutions, hopes, dreams for the year?"

"Okay," Ronan said, knowing Jonathan was not going to let this go. "But no body stuff from you two," he eyed them both critically. "You're both deeply attractive men and I won't be contradicted on this point."

"Well, shit, I'm out then," Lovett cracked with a wry grin. "Tommy?"

Tommy froze. He hadn't thought much about resolutions yet. If he was completely honest, his only plan going in to next year was to try not to fuck up this relationship. But he couldn't very well  _ say that _ so he just muttered,  "Ronan, you can go first."

Ronan tilted his head to the side and was silent for a moment. Tommy had to tear his eyes away to stop himself from gawking. He still didn't understand how a man could look so hot just  _ thinking _ .

“I want to make the time to pray more. Possibly make the time to go to an actual church."

When Lovett didn't immediately fill the space with a joke, Tommy jumped at the chance: “Yeah, and I’d like to become the Pope.”

Ronan looked surprised, a little confused, and drew back towards the arm of the couch. Lovett turned away from Tommy and looked at Ronan. Immediately, Tommy realized he had messed up.

"Sorry, uh, shit, bad joke from me. I didn't mean--I didn't realize--I didn't know you, uh, practiced like that?"

It was little moments like this that reminded him he was new here. He didn't know every little thing about Ronan and Lovett; he hadn't had eight years to learn.

In many ways, Tommy had always been a part of them. How could he not be? He knew them each before they knew each other. He saw Lovett come home starry-eyed from their first date. He ran into Ronan at DC parties and tried to be subtle about pumping him for updates on Lovett once he was in LA. 

But he hadn't ever been a part of them like  _ this. _ And as gracious a welcome as they had extended, as loved as he felt by both of them, he was still stumbling through the first blushes of a new relationship while they were cruising through a well-established partnership.

Ronan's face had softened as Tommy babbled. "Yeah, it's...it's leftover from my mom kind of," he explained. "Like she technically raised us Catholic, though it was a kind of hippie Catholic where we rarely went to church. But she prayed a lot and I guess that got into me deep enough that I fall back on it in...uh, difficult times." He gave Lovett a meaningful glance.

"I've wanted for a long time to kind of formalize that for myself, or figure out if some of the formal trappings of religious practice work for me. I've been praying in a rather scatter-shot manner for a few years now and it's...its been really grounding in times I've needed it. I've found it really helpful to have… somewhere to put my fears, my concerns, that reminds me they're small in the great scheme of things. But I don't...there's not a lot of order undergirding it. Or any of the...the theory…or ritual or anything. I've only ever done it by myself, sort of on the fly. I want to try to get the full benefit out of it, to really test it out for myself, examine what I believe and what works for me and how it can be helpful in my life. And it seems like having structure in that, having community in that might be beneficial too." 

Tommy was awestruck. He was every part a WASP, which had included many childhood Sunday mornings in a sparse, unadorned, white-walled New England church, but those mornings were quickly taken over by sports and studying and other things that had seemed much more important.

He'd never considered this a lack in his life and he'd never heard anyone he thought of as particularly, well, smart, talk about religion much at all. At least, not pursuing it as an adult. But Ronan had clearly thought about this a lot and he'd just said the first dickish thing that came into his head.

He sat up a little more and reached his hand out to place it on top of Ronan's.

"I'm sorry dude, I went for a cheap joke and I shouldn't have...that was shitty, I'm sorry."

Lovett rolled his eyes at the word _dude_, but smiled at Tommy as he said: "You missed the truly hilarious joke in this situation: the two of us offering to come and seeing how fast we'd all get smited after setting foot inside a church."

Now it was Ronan's turn for eye rolling. "I would not select a church that was  _ like that _ , have a little faith, Jonathan." He smirked at the double entendre. "Besides, New Testament God isn't much of a smiter; that's  _ your _ guy: HaShem, Adonai, El, insert your preferred name here."

"Honestly, it is ridiculous that you know all of that."

"Why shouldn't I know about your religious tradition, too?"

"I was forced to memorize that shit in my bar mitzvah classes and I have to dig it out of the recesses of my memory where I stored, like, what the mitochondria does every time I go to temple. For it to be on the tip of your tongue is frankly rude."

Ronan just shook his head. "Anyway, those are my resolutions. What are yours, Jonathan?"

"That's it? You're not forgetting a couple like, oh, I don't know, 'take an actual vacation' or 'start actually sleeping'."

"The key to success is setting attainable goals Lovett." Tommy deadpanned. 

This cracked them both up, Lovett laughing his full-throated "caught by surprise" laugh, Ronan doing his nasally giggle. It was the sound Tommy had grown to love most in the world over the past few months. Being the one responsible for that sound as much as humanly possible was also probably on Tommy's list for the year. That was another one he definitely couldn't say out loud. 

Lovett also paused for a moment, thoughtful. A fond ache filled Tommy's chest. He'd seen this expression on Lovett's face a million times before, and he'd loved it every time but now it felt a little more like his; a thing he could watch without caring who noticed. 

"I want… I want to talk and think a little more about hope this year, I think. Things are terrible, and they may get more terrible, but I want to make sure I keep remembering that we have to believe things can get better, or else what are we doing any of this for? I think, I mean we have to get realistic about specifics at some point but if you're not hopeful about a broader vision of what  _ better _ can look like, it's...it's hard to know what you're going for, what you're fighting for. It's...I want to remember how hard it was for my younger self to imagine how much better my life was going to get in so many ways and how if I hadn't had people to look up to who demanded better, who painted a clear, specific picture of what better would actually mean and look like, I would have accepted a lot of shit with the idea that that was as good as I could hope for. Like how do we picture a world where people are freer to be who they are, where there's not this crushing sense that one little emergency might upend your whole life, where there's not this feeling that what's good for someone else must be bad for me? I don't know, but I want to think about that more, talk about that more."

Tommy had no idea how he had any business being invited to this New Year's party. He was tearing up, and before he knew it, words were coming out in a rush that he couldn't stop to edit.

"I don't...all of the resolutions I've thought of lately have been, like, bullshit about getting more downloads for the pod, goals for checking things off my to do list and you both are...you're just always aspiring to something higher and I love that, I love you both and I...all I want this year is to live up to...to being with you and being good to you and hoping that you can handle me being...like this and not...I'm not always like you guys even if I want to be...I want to be better like you is my resolution, I guess." He tried to chuckle wetly, back away quietly from such a transparent display of emotion. 

They were both silent for a long moment and Tommy's heart raced. Was it too much? Too weird? 

Then Lovett looked at the clock, turned and said to Ronan, "Oh, hey look, it's midnight."

Ronan got up and circled around the back of the couch until he was behind Tommy, took his chin in hand and kissed him, deep and firm and sweet. A kiss to build on, a kiss with promise in it.

Tommy was still blinking, gobsmacked after they pulled apart, when Lovett leaned across the couch to plant his own kiss on Tommy, just as firm, just as committed, with a heat and a hunger that woke Tommy all the way up. 

They all looked at each other for a moment before Tommy managed to choke out "Happy New Year". Lovett and Ronan chuckled and kissed each other.

"You, Tommy Vietor," Ronan said when he and Jon finished kissing. "Are exactly who we want here with us. In all of this. And we want you to keep us honest about being good to you and making you feel as loved as we do."

Lovett took Tommy's hand and nodded. "If you think I don't look in the mirror regularly and go,  _ holy shit, I got Tommy Vietor to fall in love with me, _ you don't know me. You? This?" He looked at Ronan and Tommy, his two beautiful boys. "It's a part of why I believe in something better."

Tommy nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Ronan laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, and Lovett patted him on the knee, then reached to pass out the champagne flutes. 

Ronan raised his and said, "Here's to us."

Jon responded, practiced, "Who's like us?"

This time, Tommy knew what was next: "Damn few."

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Happy Secret Santa!
> 
> This was such a fun little scene to imagine, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thank you to thetimesinbetween for the beta.
> 
> The "Here's to us/who's like us/damn few" line is in a song in Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along which is about old friends sticking together, but the quote is often attributed to Robert Burns (of Auld Lang Syne fame) though it is probably an older, traditional toast that he was among the first to write down.
> 
> The title is from a Burns poem (To A Louse), and is more beautiful but less easily understood in the original Scots: Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us! It's actually about seeing lice on a lady at church but I think there's a "rewards of being loved/mortifying ordeal of being known" reading one can take of it as well.
> 
> (This has been "embedding references in fanfic that are too clever by half then over-explaining them with LetsSpinTheWheel")
> 
> As always: KIS, KIS


End file.
